


Where Do I Know You From?

by Movie_Riggs



Series: The Internship [1]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: AU, F/M, Reunion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-18
Updated: 2018-04-18
Packaged: 2019-04-24 11:06:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14354187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Movie_Riggs/pseuds/Movie_Riggs
Summary: Mike Wheeler is late. Again. While looking for the person he was supposed to be meeting up with, he runs into someone else who looks very familiar, but he just can't place it.





	Where Do I Know You From?

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally posted on my Fanfiction account. Decided to upload it here as well because why not.
> 
> I don't want to give anything away at the beginning, but you do have know:  
> 1) This is an AU that ignores the events of Season 2 (even though I love Season 2 with all my heart)  
> 2) This takes place about ten to twelve years after the events of Season 1
> 
> This will be a series of one-shots focusing on moments in Mike's life before/after he goes to his internship during the day.

Mike Wheeler checked his watch for the third time in two minutes, cursing the consistency of the device. He was late. He hurried down flight after flight of stairs, knowing that the elevator would take too long. Finally, his feet came to touch the ground floor of the building, and he took a moment to catch his breath.

A fourth glance at his watch rekindled enough energy in him to keep running, outside and into the parking lot. The sun was beginning to set, casting a pinkish-orange glow on the young man's pale, freckled face. Contrasting his skin tone was his midnight black hair, which flopped comically as he ran.

He began muttering to himself as he unlocked his car door, tossed his briefcase into the passenger's seat, and thrust the key into the ignition.

"Shit, shit, shit, shit…"

He nearly peeled out of the lot (something which he had almost never done) and drove five miles over the speed limit for all of several minutes before he was stuck at his first red light of the evening.

"Shit, shit, shit,  _shit!_ "

He was beginning to sound like Dustin.

The venue was a large, outdoor stadium that had seen better days. Tonight, however, the oft-dreary grounds had been host to a crowd-pleasing show. Young adults ambled out of the rickety gate at their own pace, laughing and reminiscing about the event. The smell of cigarettes and beer wafted through the air, meeting Mike's nose the moment he managed to park and exit his car.

His eyes immediately began scanning the crowd of people milling about. Even as everyone else was taking their leave of the stadium, he entered, in the hopes that maybe he was not as drastically late as he thought.

Two observations proved him wrong.

The first was a single, solitary red and yellow poster; the only one left hanging anywhere around the venue. It had been torn down the middle, but solid black letters still clearly read, 'Tonight Only: The Clash.'

The second was a voice, sweet and simple, that announced to him, "It's over."

Mike glanced to his left to acknowledge the young woman who had bothered to stop what she was doing and talk to him. "I'm sorry?"

She nodded her head toward the empty stage. "The concert. It's over."

Mike nodded sullenly, all at once disappointed in himself and…overcome…with a sudden feeling about the woman.

Naturally beautiful by all means, she stood a couple of inches shorter than him. Her hair was slicked back and she wore all-black clothes; faithful to the genre of the music she had come to hear that evening. Her smile was close-lipped and gentle, and the voice that sprang from it was soft and sounded like a guardian angel coming to comfort him after a nightmare.

All of this Mike was able to take in no faster than it took his heart to skip a beat (as one's heart tends to do when one registers a person blessed with such beauty). But it was her eyes—her big, brown, doe eyes—that he became lost in before he knew what was happening. He must have stared at her for several long, potentially dangerous seconds before he momentarily snapped out of his phase. To his surprise, the woman did not look at all disturbed by his awkward behavior. She simply stood there, several feet away from him, retaining her smile. She acted as if she were patiently awaiting for him to say something.

Eventually, Mike did. "I was supposed to be meeting a friend of mine here," he admitted, having no idea why he had chosen his most recent failure as the topic of conversation. "He's a big fan of the band. But I got caught up at my internship. He had the tickets, though, so he probably got in without me."

The woman did not break eye contact, nor did she offer a reply of any kind. It was Mike's turn to wonder if he ought to be off-put by the way she was looking at him. It was those eyes, damn it. Something was so familiar about those eyes, and he just could not for the life of him figure out what it was.

"I'm sorry," he said with a bewildered toss of his shoulders. "Where do I know you from?"

His inquiry caused the woman's closed lips to break apart, displaying a slightly uneven but pearly white smile. Almost as if that was the exact question she had been waiting for him to ask.

"The bus," was her answer. "From Hawkins to Chicago? I was going back to the city after visiting my dad. I sat across from you the whole way."

_The bus from Hawkins to Chicago?_  Mike racked his brain, trying to recall an image of this woman sitting on a dirty, rickety old seat within an arm's-length of his own. Maybe she had, and maybe she hadn't, but her response still did not satisfy that awful, persistent tug he felt in his gut.

" _That's_  where I know you from?" He did not mean to let so much disbelief creep into his tone, but it was exactly what he was feeling.

The woman's smile suddenly disappeared completely, and all of a sudden she looked much younger. Like a child that had been left out in a storm in the middle of a rainy November night might look. She shook her head once.

"No."

Before Mike could beg for a clearer answer or even let loose an outright demand to know who she was and what she was doing to cause so much turmoil in his mind and heart, the woman closed the gap between them in an instant. Her hands went to his cheeks, cupping them tenderly. Mike felt a pleasant chill run down his spine at her soft, warm touch. Those brown eyes began to rim with tears, making them somehow all the more familiar to him. And her lips…those were lips he had tasted before, he knew it. Only once, only for the briefest of seconds, but he knew it.

Mike Wheeler's face suddenly contorted from one of confusion to one of recognition, followed all at once by a mixture of pain, sadness, relief, and love. Unable to help himself, his own eyes began to water. He did not have to kiss her to know what those lips would feel like pressed against his own. He did not have to look and see if a small tattoo was inked onto her left wrist, because he was already well aware that it was.

Even though he  _knew_  now, he knew who this person-out-of-time was, his voice still said her name in a questioning manner, because he just could not understand how, after so long, she was finally in front of him again.

"Eleven?"

**Author's Note:**

> A sequel is already written, I'll be posting that soon!


End file.
